


Resolution

by MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Gen, Legos, SPN Angst Appreciation Day, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:23:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5599582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd/pseuds/MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tiny Sam on New Year's Eve.</p>
<p>
  <em>A peanut butter cup is no compensation for ruining a kid’s brand-new Christmas-gift Lego set, even if you didn’t mean to.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resolution

**Author's Note:**

> Written for spn angst appreciation day, January 1, 2016.

 

“It’s different. He’s not like Dean.”

His father’s voice is low and calm, and there’s no other noise except for the slight slithering sound of the coiled telephone cord as it slides across the little motel room table, so Sam doesn’t know what woke him up. Maybe it was merely hearing his name mentioned through the fog of sleep, for he knows that his father is talking about him.

Sam opens his eyes and flexes the arm extended under his pillow. His head is turned away from the chair his father is slumped in, and just beyond the hill-edge of the pillow he can make out Dean’s profile in the dim light. Dean doesn’t move. He’s asleep.

Sam’s still mad at him, though he feels a little bad about it now, especially when he remembers how his brother offered to let him have both of the Reese’s peanut butter cups, and how defeated he’d looked when Sam rejected them. It probably would have been best to have forgiven him and not gone to bed angry, particularly after all the screaming Sam had done. But a peanut butter cup is no compensation for ruining a kid’s brand-new Christmas-gift Lego set, even if you didn’t mean to.

Sam stretches his arm a little more and feels for his ill-fated Lego figures of a knight and his horse. His fingers brush against the marred plastic, and he feels a new surge of annoyance. It’s not like they were invisible, so Dean should have seen them before he set the pan of boiling-hot Spaghetti-os directly on them. And then to have the gall to insist that it was _Sam’s_ fault—Sam glares at his unconscious brother in the semi-darkness.

“Yeah, I know—I know, Jim, I just—all that anger, where does it come from?” His father is talking to Pastor Jim, the only person with whom he ever discusses Sam and Dean, as far as Sam knows. Sam adores Pastor Jim and loves their visits to his picturesque little town with the nice church ladies who coo over him and give him cookies. He wonders sometimes why they can’t always stay there, and he tried to ask Dean a couple of times, but Dean only told him to stop asking questions.

His father is quiet for a moment, listening, and then he lets out a low chuckle. “Are they?” he says. “It’s just that it seems excessive, you know? Like he’s out of control.” Sam hears the soft thunk of a bottle being put down on the table.

Out of control. It’s true, and it troubles Sam too. Some rational part of his mind is aware that his level of fury is out of proportion to the injustices he’s subject to by his father’s single-mindedness and his brother’s heedlessness, but Sam can’t help it. This, he knows, is what hinders his progress toward becoming a big boy, a good boy like Dean.

“He’s so smart, too. God, Jim, I’m not cut out for this,” his father continues. “It scares me.”

Sam’s eyes widen in the darkness. He presses his face deeper into his pillow, which cuts off his view of Dean. This, he thinks, is impossible. His father is not afraid of anything. Dean said so.

There’s a very long silence in which his father takes two or three swigs from his bottle. Finally he says, “I know, Jim, and I’ve thought about it—but no. Yeah—I know they’d be in good hands; I couldn’t ask for better—but I can’t. I can’t, and that’s that.” Another swig. “Anyway, this won’t go on much longer. I’ll get this thing taken care of, and then I can settle ’em down and we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. I got a good feeling about this new year, Jim. Really.”

Another long pause, and then his father is saying, “I’ll keep that in mind, and I appreciate it. Thanks, Jim. Sorry for keeping you up.” A soft, ironic laugh. “Yeah. Happy New Year.”

Sam hears the muffled scrape of his father’s chair against the flat motel-room carpeting, a heavy sigh, slightly unsteady footsteps, and the quiet click of the bathroom door closing. He raises himself up cautiously and looks over at his brother, but Dean is still clearly sound asleep, breathing steadily through half-parted lips.

Sam bounces a little against the loose-springed mattress, but Dean does not awaken. A lonely lump of distress tightens in his throat, and Sam feels, rising fast in his gut, the perverse desire to let loose a furious wail, to disrupt the peace of his brother’s dreams. He pictures, with an odd sense of satisfaction, Dean clutching at him, their father bursting out of the bathroom, both of them demanding, _What’s wrong, Sammy? What do you see?_

They never ask, _What do you feel?_

Dean breathes softly and deeply. Sam matches his own breathing to his brother’s rhythmic inhale and exhale, and shutting his eyes, he succeeds in wrangling the monster inside him. He’s found something even more powerful than this rage that taints him, and for the first time he understands what it means to be grown up. He holds his breath for a moment, but the beast is tamed. He won’t cry, not this time. He sinks back down next to Dean, scrunching himself small and fetal, and presses close enough that his brother’s bony elbow pokes into his back.

He reaches under his pillow and lifts up the disfigured Lego knight and horse. How rare it is for them to have anything new and bright and beautiful; Dean of all people should have understood why their ruin had infuriated him so much. His father has promised to replace them, but Sam knows that this is unlikely.

He won’t cry. Not this time, not next time, not ever, he decides. He’s a big boy now. If he has to, he can cry quietly into his pillow in the middle of the night when he thinks no one hears him. Just like Dean.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I appreciate any feedback. You can find me on tumblr at: [amisplacedlonelyheartsad.tumblr.com](http://amisplacedlonelyheartsad.tumblr.com) or on LJ at: [misplaced_ad.livejournal.com](http://misplaced_ad.livejournal.com)


End file.
